Nuclear Issues

Stephen Walt provides A realist POV on the war in Ukraine, competition with China, COVID, and more in the second part of an interview with Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal.

A quarter-century ago, China conducted what it called “missile tests” bracketing the island of Taiwan to deter it from a move toward independence by demonstrating that China could cut Taiwan’s ocean lifelines. In response, in a show of superiority that forced China to back down, the United States deployed two aircraft carriers to Taiwan’s adjacent waters. If China were to repeat the same missile tests today, it is highly unlikely that the United States would respond as it did in 1996. If U.S. carriers moved that close to the Chinese mainland now, they could be sunk by the DF-21 and DF-26 missiles that China has since developed and deployed. This article presents three major theses concerning the military rivalry between China and the United States in this century.

Russia's war in Ukraine has brought questions of nuclear deterrence back to the fore, reminding world leaders that risk reduction must remain a top item on the global agenda. Because political and technological change will always introduce new issues, the work of maintaining a "just deterrence" is never done.

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

Whether they regard it as competitive, cooperative, or confrontational, virtually all observers agree that the U.S.-China relationship is consequential. From cyber norms and AI to military tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the global struggle to turn the tide on climate change, how Washington and Beijing manage their shared future will shape the globe for decades to come. Through research and relationship-building, the Center is dedicated to helping the U.S. and China collaborate and compete without conflict.

William d'Ambruoso explains why high-level engagement, built on a baseline of deterrence, lessens the chances of war and opens the way for future cooperation in North Korean–U.S. relations.

The historian Fredrik Logevall has written a grand fresh take on the life of John F. Kennedy, as if to reignite an old flame. He's given us a chance to remember politics as the sport of great minds and hearts, high language, serious stuff.

As the world commemorates the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, the Center for the National Interest's Korean Studies team decided to ask dozens of the world's top experts a simple question: Do you believe that the Korean War will finally come to an end before its next major anniversary in 2025? Joseph Nye provides his answer to that question.

Nathaniel Moir reviews Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam by Ingo Trauschweizer.

Joseph Nye writes that some decoupling of interdependence is likely, particularly in areas related to technology that directly affect national security. But will Washington and Beijing go too far?